An epidemic in illegal downloading

Adam Turner

Missing one episode of West Wing, thanks to constant schedule changes, was enough to set Mark and Kim down the road to online piracy.

The pair, suburban thirtysomethings with a young baby, have given up trying to keep track of when their favourite shows screen each week. After missing that initial episode of West Wing several years ago, they turned to a tech-savvy friend for advice on how to download it from the internet.

It wasn't long before they were downloading all their favourite shows, and today Mark and Kim watch television when it suits them rather than when it suits the networks.

And they can just as easily download music and movies, although Mark and Kim generally restrict themselves to television shows. A cheap DivX-enabled DVD player lets them watch downloads on their television as easily as watching a movie, and at practically the same picture quality.

They realise they're breaking the law, but Mark and Kim say that downloading TV feels less like stealing than downloading movies or music.

"People might argue that you pay for television shows by watching the ads but you can skip the ads these days with video recorders if you want," Mark says. "Besides, when they put your show on at 10.30 at night, I don't think they're really counting on your revenue."

File-sharing is no longer just in the realm of frustrated Star Trek fans, with almost every television show that screens in the US or Britain available online within 24 hours at DVD quality or better. Movies are also often available before they even open in the cinemas. In Australia, Nine's real-life crime series Underbelly created an online frenzy after a court order banned its screening in Victoria. The entire series was available online before it even finished screening in the rest of the country, with Nine powerless to intervene.

The most popular television downloads include the likes of Lost, Prison Break and 24 - generally shows with long story arcs and complicated plots that are difficult to follow when the networks chop and change the schedule.

"We've kept downloading shows because the TV schedule keeps changing," Kim says. "They were just playing havoc with us. They'd stop shows, start them, show them really late at night and then stick in a repeat episode just to stretch out the season for another few weeks."

Using a system known as BitTorrent (see below), Mark and Kim download television shows or movies as easily as searching for websites on Google. They pay about $70 a month for a 20Mbps cable broadband connection allowing them to download 12GB. While they need home internet access for work, they also justify the expense by the fact that it means they don't need pay TV and rarely hire movies.

"Downloading our favourite shows means when we find time to watch television, we watch what we're interested in rather than whatever rubbish happens to be on," Kim says.

While Mark and Kim are selective what they download, fellow Melburnians Shane and Amber use the internet for all their entertainment needs. The couple keep two computers in their lounge room dedicated to home entertainment and connected to their television and surround sound system. They pay $80 for a 90GB download cap, but are stuck on a 1.5Mbps connection as they wait for a faster ADSL2+ slot to open up on their telephone exchange.

"I've walked into a video shop twice in the last five years and, while I was in there, I made a list on my BlackBerry of things I was going to download," Shane says. "Considering what's available online, why the hell would I watch free-to-air TV or even cable?"

"When it comes to television and movies, we can download high-definition episodes of shows with no ads," adds Amber. "This means we can go to bed half an hour earlier, plus we can pause it if we need to. With kids in the house, you often need to pause the television."

Shane and Amber download files from encrypted online Usenet newsgroups (see below), which they find faster and more reliable than BitTorrent.

"I know people who don't go out places if their favourite show is on that night," says Amber. "They don't have any other access to it so they will seriously stop their life to watch this show. With a complicated show like Lost, if you miss one episode you have no idea what is going on. I'd rather wait until the series has screened in the US, download the whole lot and then watch it when it suits me."

Such stories are becoming more common, although as far back as 2005 Australians already ranked as the world's second most prolific downloaders of video after the British in a study by British technology consultancy Envisional.

Legitimate online alternatives for watching movies and television are starting to emerge in Australia from the likes of Apple and BigPond (see below), but it's yet to be seen if offering pirates a carrot will be any more effective than using the stick.

While there have been several high-profile court cases in the US, it's clear that Australians illegally downloading movies and television shows have little to fear right now from the copyright police.

For years Australia's copyright enforcers have privately admitted they have no intention of dragging local file-sharers through the courts US-style. The head of the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft now publicly admits the group has no interest in prosecuting file- sharers. Executive director Adrianne Pecotic says AFACT has more interest in catching those releasing bootleg movies than those sitting on the couch downloading them for their private consumption.

"Our aim is not to be going in and bashing down people's doors or suggesting that the police should be taking enforcement action against people who are downloading," Ms Pecotic says. "It's not something we should be wasting police resources on. "Police resources ... need to be used very appropriately to target people who are stealing copies of movies and then uploading them."

A 21-year-old Sydney man was fined $1000 for uploading a copy of The Simpsons Movie last year, which he recorded in a cinema on his mobile phone. Hew Raymond Griffiths, Australian head of international online piracy ring DrinkOrDie, was also extradited to the US last year to face charges. Thus far, no one in Australia has been prosecuted or sued simply for illegally downloading content from the internet. Based on trials overseas, Ms Pecotic is placing her hopes on getting ISPs to warn their users against file-sharing and then cutting off their internet access after multiple violations. She believes that 90% of people will stop file-sharing when they realise that it's illegal and can be monitored.

AFACT monitors Australian peer-to-peer file-sharing of copyrighted movies and traces the traffic back to internet service providers. To date, the downloading of television shows has been all but ignored.

AFACT cannot identify individual users but instead requests the ISPs pass a warning to those users. There's anecdotal evidence that some Australian ISPs are forwarding these warnings to customers, although Ms Pecotic won't say which ISPs do this.

AFACT wants Australian ISPs to take sanctions against repeat offenders, eventually cutting off their internet access completely. Similar trials are under way in the US and in Britain.

"People downloading in their homes need to be educated that what they're doing is wrong, is causing damage to the film industry and is in breach of the terms and conditions of their broadband connection,"

Ms Pecotic says. "We say the ISP must take action to prevent illegal file-sharing. We're really at a point where we cannot tolerate illegal file-sharing continuing as though it's perfectly normal and an activity that can be condoned. It's a very damaging activity. It caused $92million worth of damage to the film industry in 2005 in Australia alone."

The problem for AFACT is that Australia's ISPs have no interest in being judge and jury when it comes to dealing with illegal file-sharers. Ms Pecotic insists that some local ISPs have started taking action against file-sharers, but again declines to name which ISPs are involved.

Meanwhile the Internet Industry Association has said that it will take more than AFACT's allegations of file-sharing for ISPs to start disconnecting users.

"AFACT claims to have the IP addresses (of file-sharers), but it's alleged," says IIA executive director Peter Coroneos. "Even then the ISP can't say who at the address did the downloading. The due legal process must be followed in our legal system. The existing usage terms and conditions talk about illegal activity and not alleged illegal activity. People are presumed innocent until found guilty by a legally constituted court."

Even if major ISPs such as BigPond and Optus comply with such requests, serious file-sharers are attracted to the higher download limits of more progressive ISPs, which would face a massive customer backlash if they began disconnecting users based solely on the word of AFACT.

Unless legalisation forces all ISPs to comply with AFACT's requests, it would seem Australian file-sharers have little to fear from the copyright police.

The local picture

Australians finally have access to legitimate video download services, but it's yet to be seen if they'll put a major dent in illegal file sharing.

Apple sells television shows through the online Australian iTunes Store for $2.99 per episode. It also sells movies for $10-$25, but some can also be rented for $3.99 for 24 or 48hours ($4.99 for high-definition movies). A2Mbps broadband connection is required for watching videos in real-time, or 5Mbps for high-definition content (see review, page 28).

Telstra's BigPond Movies also rents television shows for $2.95 and movies for $3.95-$5.95. BigPond also offers free streaming video of news and sport. Australian competitor Reeltime.tv closed its doors in February, but is set to be revived later this year by EzyDVD as the EzyDownload service.

BigPond has more television and movie listings than Apple, although BigPond's catalogue mostly features old and obscure content. Apple's Australian service is more expensive than that in the US, while offering less content, but it is possible for Australians to circumvent Apple's restrictions and access the US iTunes Store.

A growing amount of television content is also available to Australians courtesy of the local television networks themselves. The ABC has by far the richest offering with its free iView service allowing users to watch a variety of ABC and BBC programs after they've screened on television. The resolution is sharp enough to watch full screen on your computer, although it is streamed rather than downloaded, so users need a connection of at least 1Mbps.

SBS only offers short clips of TV shows, along with full-length episodes of locally produced shorts such as Marx and Venus and Stories From the Golf.

Of the commercial networks, Nine offers free access to episodes of the locally produced McLeod's Daughters, Canal Road and Sea Patrol II, after initially charging $1.95 per episode. Ten has also embraced the concept of "catch-up TV", offering free streaming access to six locally produced programs such as Good News Week, although not at full-screen resolution.

Seven still lags behind the others, having only put The Outdoor Room and Make Me a Supermodel online in the past month - again not in full-screen resolution. Everything else from Seven is short previews.

Such services are of little use to Australians wanting to watch the latest dramas from the US such as Lost, Heroes, 24 and Prison Break - shows that many people use illegal file-sharing in order to download.

Apple launched Australian television downloads in June, the week after all the major US television series finished screening locally.

We won't know until the new seasons begin whether Apple will come good on its promise to make shows available the day after they screen on Australian television.

Downloads on the up

Anyone who can use a computer can easily download movies and television shows from the internet.

One of the most popular methods of downloading is a file-sharing system called BitTorrent. BitTorrent tracking websites, for example ISO Hunt and the Pirate Bay, let you search for movies and television shows as easily as you'd search for sites on Google. You can then use a free desktop BitTorrent application - such as uTorrent, BitComet or Vuze (formerly Azureus) - to connect to other BitTorrent users who are sharing those files. Some BitTorrent applications let you automatically download new episodes of television shows as they come online.

Once downloaded, you can watch the videos on your computer, transfer them to your phone, stream them to your television or burn them to disc and pop them in your DVD player.

The more people sharing a file, the faster it comes down. At its peak, BitTorrent allows you to download video in almost real-time. The average movie consumes about 700MB of bandwidth, while a 60-minute TV show (42minutes with the ads removed) consumes about 350MB.

BitTorrent's decentralised nature makes it impossible for authorities to shut down such peer-to-peer sharing networks, although their usage can be monitored.

Gnutella is a similar file-sharing system that works with desktop applications such as Morpheus and LimeWire. Such technologies upload and download at the same time, which can be a trap for those using ISPs such as BigPond that count uploads towards monthly usage limits.

Efforts to catch illegal file-sharers have seen tech-savvy users turn to online encrypted forums, such as Usenet newsgroups, to download videos in ways that can't be intercepted by the copyright police.

Usenet groups are distributed across the internet, rather than on a single server. Like peer-to-peer file-sharing systems, accessing Usenet groups requires the installation of a free desktop application, the most popular including NewsLeecher, NewsBin and SABnzbd.

To take advantage of file-sharing, users can start with an internet plan offering as little as 3GB per month at speeds of 512kbps, which retails from $25 per month according to Broadband Choice (bc.whirlpool.net.au). Australian consumer broadband plans offer download speeds up to 24Mbps per second, with some plans offering well over 100GB of data a month. But plans offering unlimited downloads sell for about $100 per month, while restricted to speeds of 1.5Mbps.